


Glory

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 12:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13589967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Himuro’s smile is sharp, a quick wind across his face, and the basketball’s already hitting the asphalt when Aomine realizes Himuro’s stopped spinning it.





	Glory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sannlykke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sannlykke/gifts).



> obvious chocolatier is obvious
> 
> you said aomine going to america and my mind went straight to streetball. [this tournament](https://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/10/15/4837064/rucker-park-basketball-new-york-city-cross-country-journey%20) in particular. i hope you have as much fun reading it as i did writing it!

The air in the car is thin, but with all the tension of a shot off the backboard that somehow made its way to circling around the rim. It’s going to drop somewhere, in or out, depending on who talks next. Patience has never been Aomine’s strong suit (though he’s pretty sure it’s never been Kagami’s, either) and so he’s the one to slap out an accusation.

“Sounds like you don’t want me here,” says Aomine, and he slouches back in the passenger’s seat.

Kagami sighs, running a hand through his hair while he waits for the light to change; the only sound in the car is the ticking turn signal.

“I like playing against you. And I did mean it when I said I wanted a rematch, but I didn’t mean like, you call me up and tell me you’re getting on an international flight in a few hours so I’d better meet you at the airport. Which was the middle of the night for me, by the way.”

“Well, sorry. You got any better times?”

“Not really. And you’re here anyway, which—don’t you have school?”

Aomine shrugs, yeah, technically he should be in the Touou dorms, avoiding homework right about now, but it’s not like not doing the work or showing up in class for two or three weeks actually affects his grade as much as sucking up to the teachers and telling Coach try and cut him deals.

“I told Coach I’d be training here,” says Aomine, and that much is true. “I’ll be back in time for makeup exams.”

Kagami sighs, and Aomine doesn’t pursue it. He already feels kind of shitty about all of this; he’d arrived only with a return ticket and some backup clothes, no plans other than to play ball against Kagami all day for the next few weeks. That’s how it always plays out in books, and in his imagination, without all the rude inconveniences of real life to shove their way through like belligerent drunks on a train. But he’s here now and Kagami’s mad at him and Kagami has shit to do with his school team all day every day.

“My dad’s not home,” says Kagami. “He’s off on a consulting gig in Arkansas for another month, so I guess there’s room for you.”

“How much space do you think I take up?”

Kagami glances over, eyebrow raised at how far Aomine’s tilted back the seat (he’s tall, okay, still taller than Kagami!) but says nothing. Aomine moves the seat back further.

* * *

Aomine’s not exactly in this time zone yet, but wherever on earth they could be this would still feel like getting up at ass o’clock. Especially here, judging by the sky outside the window, black bleeding through the few grey clouds and punctured by the LED on his phone and the light from the hallway.

“You can sleep or come for a run with me,” Kagami says, and like hell Aomine’s going to fall behind him this early in the count.

Kagami’s already dressed; Aomine has to scramble to get a pair of sweatpants and a tank top and out the door behind him before he’s gone off on some trail or something

It’s not the weird kind of dry hot it was yesterday (not yet, anyway); Aomine’s still registering the scene around them when he and Kagami are joined by a guy who looks familiar for about five seconds before Aomine places him. Yosen’s captain, that emo-looking pretty boy who can’t zone.

“You,” he says.

“Me,” says the guy—shit, what’s his name?

Kagami looks between them for a couple of seconds and then shrugs. “Are we gonna run?”

Emo jerks his head toward the street and starts jogging; Kagami and Aomine follow.

Aomine could probably lap the two of them on their route if he knew where he was; he stays behind and keeps pace, though, follows them through the hills and over the sidewalk. They don’t talk much, just occasional remarks about detours and construction and routes, making the turns they say they will, occasionally slipping into English, with apologetic nods back Aomine’s way. Aomine doesn’t feel like an intruder exactly; this isn’t necessarily stuff not meant for him. It’s just something he’s not a part of, even as low key as this, and it’s a little irritating.

Aomine’s half-ready to go back to sleep after he takes a shower, but he’s hungry and it smells like coffee and he can hear something sizzling. Maybe it’s just the coffee machine, but Kagami likes cooking and eating too damn much for it not to be food. Good food, too, if he’s cooking it—which he’s not. The emo guy’s frying eggs in a pan while Kagami’s working the toaster, and Aomine rubs his eyes. Kagami’s letting this guy upstage him in his own kitchen?

“How runny do you like your yolks?” Emo says.

“Uh,” says Aomine, because he’s momentarily distracted by the way Emo’s looking at him, damp hair curling away slightly from his face, those long fucking lashes.

“Just give him the way you like it,” says Kagami.

Aomine scowls, and Emo looks at him questioningly.

“Whatever,” Aomine says, finally.

The eggs are damn good, and maybe it’s because he’s hungry but it makes more sense from more than a laziness standpoint why Kagami would let this guy make him breakfast. Then, of course, Kagami eats about half a loaf of bread’s worth of toast before grabbing his bag and putting on his basketball shoes.

“I need to leave. Aomine, spare keys are in the drawer by the far wall.”

And then he’s gone. The ignition of his jeep sounds, and then that’s gone, too, leaving Aomine in the kitchen with half a cup of coffee sitting across the way from a guy he barely knows.

“So,” says the guy, taking a drawn-out sip of coffee, giving Aomine that same look that he’s sure now has to be entering flirt territory. “Taiga said you came here to play basketball?”

* * *

Aomine’s fully prepared to dancing around having to say the guy’s name all day, letting it sit on the tip of his tongue a few times, like trying to tie a cherry stem into a knot with his mouth, but the stem snaps in half when the guy makes his first shot. Himuro, that’s it, Himuro something-or-other—of course, Aomine had remembered the way he plays, but seeing it’s pushed the right button in his memory.

Playing against him, though, there’s nothing really special. There’s no defining characteristic; his technique is what most coaches would call good, copied from a book about fundamentals with several chapters devoted to grit. He’s got a few moves of his own, a combination of techniques that on their own are basic, but clearly he’s put a lot of thought into making the ball vanish, some kind of depth perception trick that maybe has to do with the way he only looks out of one eye. But watching him, there’s nothing inspiring, no pull toward the game, no challenge that Aomine feels he has to meet. There’s plenty of that coming from Himuro’s side, trying to rise and meet him (and going farther than he should have any right to), though.

The opinion’s just starting to settle like wet concrete when the ball drops out from under Aomine’s hand. He’s headed back the other way faster, but Himuro still has the ball; he’s dribbling it around, slower, and fuck. Aomine’s heart thuds against his rib cage faster than the sound of the ball on the asphalt; Himuro had caught him off-guard and been fast enough to get the best of him. For now, though, and Aomine darts in but Himuro’s already going up into a fadeaway. Aomine’s fingers brush the air under the ball, but they don’t throw it off course. There’s a ghost of a smile on Himuro’s face, like the shot that vanishes; maybe Aomine’s only seeing it because he wants to, or maybe it really is there.

Himuro is practice and precision training and everything that should be boring and easily dismantled, but he’s not that way at all, and that sticks in Aomine’s mind like gum on a TV screen.

* * *

By the fourth day this is all a routine. Get up, jog with Kagami and Himuro, play ball with Himuro, one-on-one and then two-on-two against anyone who thinks they’re up for it. Aomine’s never found anyone who can keep up with him in two-on-two for this long (anyone who was interested, anyway) and Himuro can’t really keep up with him. Aomine wouldn’t be able to drag him into the zone even if he could do that in the first place, and he stops short of Aomine even when he’s out of arm’s reach of the first door. But he grits his teeth and moves himself, millimeter by millimeter, practically willing himself to play better than he can. It’s a different thing than anything that’s ever driven Aomine, but that doesn’t mean it’s not respectable, or that Himuro’s not fun to play with.

He can’t anticipate what Aomine’s going to do, but he can make a good enough guess, and he won’t let Aomine get away with being a ballhog too often; he’ll create his own opportunities just as well as he creates them for Aomine. He’s a little like Imayoshi, maybe, but that comparison’s unfair to both of them (Akashi, maybe, is a better one, but both of them would probably feel a little insulted by it, and even that’s just a surface comparison.)

Himuro’s really fucking pretty, too, and Aomine can’t not think about that. Even when they’re playing basketball he’ll take a shot sometimes and it’ll look picturesque, like the peak of basketball, and everything from the shape of his fingers to the center of his gravity to the outline of his nose is stunning. It’s worse when they aren’t, when they’re eating or just taking a breather, and Himuro looks at Aomine out of the corner of his eye, when he flips the cap of his water bottle. When he purses his lips. But this is only a few weeks, and Aomine’s a big boy. He can deal.

He’s looking forward to Saturday, at least, when he’ll finally get to play ball against Kagami and it’ll be as simple as trash-talking him and pushing his buttons. He’ll be doing exactly what he came here to do, no distracting cute boys to cause problems. At least, that’s what Aomine assumes, but at this point he should probably stop doing that, because Himuro shows up on Saturday, too.

Of course he does (the realization comes late). Kagami considers Himuro as much of a rival as he does Aomine, a thought that’s disconcerting like a glancing blow to the surface of still water at first but then the ripples subside and it makes sense. Of course that’s how they are. But just because it makes sense doesn’t mean Aomine has to like it, even when Himuro lets him get dibs on the first game.

They don’t zone, but Aomine still ends up more tired than he’d expected to be, maybe because he’s been playing Himuro all week and his teammates before that. He hasn’t had a game like that in a while, and even if it’s his win it’s closer than he’d meant it to be. He pours the water down his throat, leaning against the fence and waiting for Kagami to make some remark. He doesn’t.

“How’d I do?”

“Shot selection,” says Himuro. “Aomine’s fast, but that doesn’t mean you have to get a shot off as quickly as you did, especially at the beginning. Use your J; create your space. You got the hang of it too late. And even when you’re on the ground, you can go low and drive more, or at least try.”

Aomine’s eyes snap open like the locks on a car door. Kagami’s nodding as he slurps his own water, and Himuro’s face is placid. He’s not reading from any set of notes—what is he, a professional coach or something?

“Use your leg strength on D, too. Don’t be afraid to commit; he’s fast but you have the strength to pull yourself back.”

Aomine lets out a breath on that one; he’s right on the money there, but how could he tell from that far away and with one eye covered like that? Both Kagami and Himuro turn their heads to look at him.

“Yes?” says Himuro.

“You’re right,” says Aomine.

Kagami scowls at that, like it’s okay to have his flaws poked out by Himuro but not by Aomine (Aomine tries not to think which of the two of them he’d rather have enumerate his own deficits). But Himuro appears not to care that Aomine knows he’s right, and, for a second, that cuts deep. Aomine wipes the sweat from his forehead again, trying to do something with his hands to disguise the weird way that stings. Impressing Himuro shouldn’t matter that much, not when it’s about Kagami’s game.

Watching Kagami play against Himuro it’s obvious he’s trying to cement the advice in, make his own space without waiting for it to be there and take better shots. They’re landing with more accuracy, though maybe that’s because Kagami’s playing against Himuro. Of course, the pace of the game is different, even if the feeling is almost the same. Himuro’s playing to win, no matter how much he wants Kagami to succeed. He’s pushing Kagami to play better, but he’s pushing himself, too, and Aomine finds himself paying attention to Himuro’s moves almost as much as Kagami’s. He does some kind of hairpin-turn while he’s dribbling the ball, getting around Kagami and Aomine wants to see Himuro try it against him; he wants to defend that.

Kagami wins, and it seems almost surprising.

“You want to go?” Himuro says, as if he’s sizing Aomine up.

Aomine nods.

* * *

It comes up that Kagami’s leaving, off on some team retreat the next weekend, which he points out that Aomine would have known and been able to avoid if he’d planned better. Aomine supposes that’s fair, but he’s not going to say so aloud. He also does not vindictively say anything about him and Himuro having fun without Kagami, and instead uses his annoyance in their one-on-ones and two-on-twos.

Himuro never offers him unsolicited advice, but when he sits down next to Aomine against the fence Aomine wonders if he will. Or if he’ll ask about that, or if he’ll ask Aomine about how he’s feeling.

“Ever heard of Rucker Park?” says Himuro.

He wipes his brow with the hem of his shirt, Aomine might say deliberately exposing his hips and abs. Aomine focuses on the name; it sounds vaguely familiar in the way American things sometimes do (is it one of the parks they pass on their morning runs?), but in the end he shrugs.

“There’s a streetball tournament there in a few days. It’s in New York. I’m going.”

“Damn,” says Aomine. “You and Kagami both leaving.”

“I was going to ask if you wanted to come with,” says Himuro.

“Oh,” says Aomine.

Himuro looks at him, eyebrow raised, and without breaking eye contact begins to spin the basketball on his finger. As if it’s actually a question.

“Hell, yeah. What do we win?”

“Glory.”

There’d be something satirical about saying that, and maybe there is in this moment, like Himuro’s dangling it as bait over his mouth and seeing if he’ll bite, knowing he will and it’s just a matter of when. But Aomine hasn’t seen Himuro completely, or even mostly, kidding when it comes to basketball. It’s always real and serious with him, always with at least the gravity of a nearby black hole. The basketball is still spinning on his finger, maybe a little bit slower. Glory, like this, abstract, is enough for Himuro and Aomine almost trusts him enough to say it’s enough for him, too.

“What kind of glory?”

“Dr. J did it. Vince Carter. KD. Guys like that, they automatically get in on teams and stuff. But people have come to the open and gotten the last couple of spots and gone toe-to-toe with them. Pro contracts, sponsorships, a name for themselves. Could be—could be us, up there, same court as next year’s version of these guys.”

He says it like water’s cupped in his hands, more about to spill out, not like he’s being quiet because their faces are this close and Aomine couldn’t lose his voice in the sounds of traffic and the street courts if he wanted to. Like he’s thought about it, said this all in his head before. Like even he can’t pretend he wants this that much less than he does, a couple spots in a field of—tens, hundreds, thousands? Maybe this is just a stupid crush (ephemeral, of this very particular time and place and situation) and he’s about to follow a demon into hell, an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar country to a tournament he’s never even heard of, a shot of proving something to an audience he doesn’t care about yet.

“Let’s do it.”

Himuro’s smile is sharp, a quick wind across his face, and the basketball’s already hitting the asphalt when Aomine realizes Himuro’s stopped spinning it.

* * *

New York is so much and so fast, from the airport to Himuro’s cousin’s apartment to going out and finding their way to some diner for breakfast when the time’s already scraping noon (fucking time difference). And then they’re on the train, heading uptown towards the park, Himuro showing no outward signs of nerves or excitement and Aomine trying to copy him.

They emerge from the subway at quarter after two on the day of, and the court’s right there in front of them. It’s nothing like any street court Aomine’s ever seen, but there’s no mistaking it, either. There’s a wood floor over the surface, painted bright colors; there are rows of bleachers, as many as in some of the middle school courts he’d played on. They’re filled with people, mostly adults, some court-ready and some in streetwear and some in suits. This is fucking serious business. Behind the court is a high-rise, worn pink brick, the beginning of another cluster like the ones near Himuro’s cousin’s place. There’s a squat building on the other side of the park, that holds what looks like a grocery store, and opposite the high rise is a rusty bridge that runs above the street and over a river. Himuro’s taking it in, too, the usual deflection in his eye still.

They’re here, and touched by legends of the past or not, this place is about to be lit on fire right fucking now. The soles of Aomine’s shoes feel loaded, ready to fire him into the air, launch him into a vertical. There are other people here, too, some guys younger and some older, a lot of them smaller or more wiry, pushing against the mold of what a basketball player should look like. Some have tattoos up and down both arms; some look angry like they’re trying to intimidate the competition and some look tired, or focused, or something else entirely.

Aomine gets split off from Himuro by the organizers, put in a different team with four random strangers, all a little wary of each other. A team, sure, but they’re competing against each other, too, and it makes Aomine think for a brief moment of middle school. But this isn’t something for fun and games dictated by Akashi, quotas and high standards broken and raised and broken again. Aomine sighs. They’d better pass him the ball.

The first game is mostly lackluster; one guy can do fancy dribbles and make quite the impression with his dunks but he’s easily exposed by the shakiness of his defense. His dribbles are pretty but it’s easy to strip him of the ball in the middle, and his shots from beyond a couple of meters are abysmal. None of his teammates stand out, either; next to Aomine Himuro’s shoulders are squared up. They don’t relieve themselves of their tension, even though he has to know he’s better than them. Twenty minutes and they’re done, and Himuro’s team is up.

Himuro’s the last of them to touch the ball, a quick pass to complete the setup of a mundane play that works. The second time he gets the ball, he’s got a little more room to play, though, and he does. This is about winning, but winning is not necessarily about the score here. It’s about Himuro, suddenly double-teamed by two guys who think they can steal, spinning out, driving through, the ball magnetized to his hands, and then he does that fadeaway of his, the one he doesn’t like. It hangs in the air, falls out of sight, and then through the hoop, and everyone in the bleachers is looking at Himuro. He checks the ball to the other team’s de facto guard and wipes his forehead; he’s not going to bask in it. He’s aggressive on the D, starting and finishing plays on offense; by the time twenty minutes are up Aomine’s almost thrown. Damn, it was that quick? And Himuro can play like that, like he wants the spotlight all on him, greedy and glorious and dazzling? Aomine feels cheated for a second, that he hadn’t gotten to see it before except maybe when they were playing against each other, when the angles were different and when he’d been pushing Aomine, trying to coax him into falling through the door to the zone. But this is different, even from that, the way Himuro loves the game rolling off him in waves, something about him that maybe Aomine had been overlooking. But how could he not see that?

His team is up. He’s got to prove he’s at least as good.

Aomine does; for those few (too few) minutes he plays better than he has even facing off against Himuro and Kagami. Everything feels smooth, clicking into place; he’s more than the usual three steps ahead of where the ball’s going to go. His blocks are precise; he pounces on mistakes before his opponents make them; his shots fly free and loose from his fingers. He’s not paying much attention to the crowd, but when he turns to look at the final buzzer, there’s Himuro, on his feet, and that’s all Aomine needs to know.

He sits down next to him, ready to watch what comes next, and totally unprepared. There’s a guy on one team, about his size, bouncing on his feet like he’s nervous. But it’s more like he’s fucking fast, exploding like a bullet in thin air, feet seeming to propel him like they’re wood-repellant, shots ringing off the backboard. He puts on a show all by himself; the points just keep coming and it’s as if the other nine guys on the court are irrelevant. Fuck, a guy like that should be in the pros somewhere already, shouldn’t he?

Maybe by the end of the summer he will be. He’s the clear winner, at any rate, the one with the weeks on this court lying out before him.

* * *

Himuro’s talking to a guy who looks like some kind of big deal, expensive phone in hand, wearing a pair of limited edition Air Force Ones on the fucking dirty sidewalk. He hears his name come out of Himuro’s mouth, then repeated (and mangled) by the rich guy. English words that Aomine doesn’t know, one or two that don’t seem to add up on their own, and the rich guy holds out his hand for Aomine to shake. He presses a business card into Aomine’s palm and then turns around.

“What did he want?” says Aomine.

“He’s an agent,” says Himuro. “He was impressed with your game, especially when I told him you were playing at a Japanese high school.”

“Lost, though,” says Aomine, and Himuro smiles at him.

“You’ve got time. You can’t even get drafted until you’re nineteen, you know.”

“I know,” says Aomine.

“But if you needed validation about keeping pace with Taiga…”

“I don’t need validation.”

“Isn’t that why you’re here?” says Himuro.

He’s here to play basketball. That does lead to wanting to be better than Kagami, but that’s just how rivalry works. Kise’s back in Japan and there are younger guys starting to nip at their heels, and Kagami’s different (he was at that level before any of them; he comes from a completely different direction; he’s fucking fun to play against). But Kagami’s competition is unknown, and probably better, and Aomine wants to know what he’s up against and how far he has to go. He’s not afraid, but he wants to keep up even if it’s an ocean away, so that one day when they’re both pros they’ll be able to face off like they did in high school, when it was always interesting.

“What about you?” says Aomine. “What are you going to do? You want to beat him too, right?”

Himuro shrugs. “I’ll try out for my school team, play if I make it and play streetball if I don’t.”

“If you make the team?” says Aomine.

“Division I colleges aren’t like high school. There are guys there who have been scouted since middle school, who made all-state and all-country all-star teams and have full scholarships. I was the captain of some school in Japan no one’s ever heard of and I never won anything. They have no reason to put me on the team if I’m not clearly above the level of those guys.”

“What makes you think you’re not?”

“What makes you think the coaches will see it that way?”

“You’re an idiot,” says Aomine.

“I don’t like taking things for granted,” says Himuro. “They always come back to bite me.”

The crowds of people are moving; Himuro heads toward an underpass below the rusty bridge, and Aomine follows. His shoulders are square but not tense, his shirt hanging off of him a little too loose the way he always wears them. Aomine’s known this guy’s name for two weeks and there’s already an always, already enough to really know him. Aomine knows him enough already, in all the ways that account. He stops, and Himuro turns. The sun is sinking, a blood-orange in the sky over the other side of the island. It makes the lighting all weird, bright lines on Himuro’s skin that don’t look out of place somehow.

He tastes like sweat when Aomine kisses him; his lips are soft even though Aomine is suddenly conscious of how dry his own are. When Himuro pulls away, Aomine’s hands are half-raised; he still hasn’t figured out what to do with them. Himuro doesn’t laugh at him this time, but smiles slight and soft.

“You’d better come back once you’re done with school.”

It’s no idle threat. Aomine could joke about Himuro wanting him, or that he’s not leaving that soon, or something else. He nods instead.

“Yeah. I will. Don’t worry. I want to know I can still beat you, too.”

He hadn’t said that to make Himuro kiss him, but he’s glad that Himuro does it.


End file.
